The Royal Navy’s successful invasion of Jamaica in 1655 had a lot of terribly negative outcomes. The commanders ended up in the Tower of London. Many of the English sailors fell sick or starved. A lot of Spanish settlers died. But there was one undeniably positive outcome: rum.

22 January 2015

The ocean can look enormously peaceful, like a postcard sent from heaven by someone on Xanax. Under the surface, things aren’t nearly so calm and picturesque. And on the coast of North Africa, the UK’s Royal Navy found another salty hazard: Two previously unmapped underwater mountains, jutting up from the seabed.

16 January 2015

The future of naval warfare will likely include lasers, auto-cannons and hypersonic missiles launched from the other side of the horizon. But while it may not have a defence against frickin’ lasers, China’s newly unveiled Type 1130 close-in weapon system can make short work of inbound warheads travelling at four times the speed of sound.

2 January 2015

Last year, Australia dramatically boosted its order of the still-in-development, problem-prone F-35 stealth fighter. Now a new report says the jet’s 25mm cannon won’t be operational until 2019 at the earliest. Even more laughable is that it probably doesn’t even need the gun to begin with.

4 December 2014

The ocean is an inhospitable place for soft, land-based human bodies. It’s dark, oxygenless, and, perhaps most intractable of all, really cold. At the pressure of certain depths, neoprene suits will compress and lose their insulating power. The air in tanks also gets cold, so divers become chillier with each breath. But in the ’60s the US Navy thought it had an ingenious solution to it all: nuclear power.

25 November 2014

Video: Whoa. Check out this impressive video of a new Norwegian Naval Strike Missile tested off the coat of Andøya, in northern Norway: The 180kg, four-metre-long, 150-kilometre range weapon hit and blew up the frigate KNM Trondheim.

22 October 2014

Tensions are high off the coast of Sweden right now, as the country’s navy hunts what it believes to be a broken down Russian submarine hiding below the surface. The whole thing feels like it’s torn from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel.